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Billary

I have said previously (as have others) that I believe Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s truest heir.

The New York Times has a curious story today that I am still thinking about. I am not sure what I think about the strategy.

I know that I am happy that the Clintons are not ceding the ‘black’ vote’ to Obama. The most gratifying aspect of this campaign to me has been Obama’ run as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as the ‘black candidate.’ For that reason, he has had to work hard to earn black support, which he still doesn’t have, not totally. Black women, for instance, may still end up supporting Hillary (because I may not return to this subject, consider this in the meantime).

Hillary, at first, did not think she would have to contest for the ‘black vote,’ such was the reservoir goodwill built by Bill Clinton over the course of his political career. Bill Clinton was no less exploitative of African-Americans in his political career than other Democrats. And the party during his reign still took African-Americans for granted. But, even if short of tangible gains for blacks, Bill Clinton was at least empathetic.

That was a change from the open hostility that Ronald Reagan in particular and Republicans in general have exhibited, something that continues today in some of the coded and overt gestures that the current crop of Republican candidates are making on the campaign trail.

Which is why Obama should have to explain better his apparent Nevada apostasy regarding Reagan and the gibe about the Republican Party being the ‘party of ideas.’

Reagan and those ‘ideas’ that the Republican Party continue to traffick in demonized African-Americans and devastated cities, preyed on communities of color , and the imperiled the poor during the past generation. It is not enough to say “I want me some’ Obama Republicans.’ ”

I remember some of the reasons the so-called “Reagan Democrats” deserted the party to vote with Republicans. I am not going to discuss them here but the consequences of that decision are still being felt today.

In any case, Hillary knows she’s in a race now and she’s truly fighting. I hope to take the cudgel to Obama some more on this subject but the person I want to talk about is Bill Clinton and his struggle for a tone against Obama.

Clinton has been too emotional, too hot, and some of his language too freighted for me not to wonder why he seems so bothered by Obama. This is a contest and Bill, of all people, should enjoy the arena and this battle. But he does not seem to.

Ok. I have to run now. I want to think more about this.

Sharing

I posted a piece about Barack Obama a couple of days ago. I got a couple of comments from Todd Drew of the Yankees for Justice blog (great blog) and one of his readers. Here’s what they said and my reply:

Todd Drew said…
There are a lot of liberals that think the Democratic Party is not liberal enough for them anymore. Comments like this from one of the Party’s up-and-coming leaders only strengthens that belief.

January 21, 2008 8:05 AM
JoeyBoy said…
Greetings, I came over from Yankees for Justice. I like your commentary.

I had not seen those Reagan comments before. I like Obama, but if he thinks ANYTHING Reagan did is going to play with people like me he is sorely mistaken.

January 21, 2008 12:27 PM
Michael O. Allen said…
Joeyboy

Thanks and welcome. I hope to have posted more but I caught a flu bug and have been bed-ridden.

On the post, I love politics and I really, really want to like Obama. Comments like the one about Reagan (which I think is tactical but I don’t understand the tactic) is what’s keeping me from coming fully on board. Like Todd said, he’s a real bright star of the Democratic Party. The question is, where does he want to take the party?

I hope it’s not in the direction that Reagan took the nation. Reagan did real and lasting damage.

Thanks again. Michael

King's Day

There’s a lot of reverent (no pun intended) talk today about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. Bill Maxwell in his 2003 St. Pete Times column even went so far as to castigate those who don’t speak in appropriately respectful tone of the slain civil rights leader.

One of the people Maxwell was unhappy with is comedian Chris Rock, who has made a habit of invoking Dr. King in often less than respectful vein:


Now there’s alot of talk about the people of Arizona being racist. So I went to see for myself, I went to Arizona and I’m walking through the streets of Tucson pushing my little baby brother in a stroller when a white woman comes up to the baby, smiles and says ‘Boy what a pretty niglet.’ Now if you don’t like black people, that’s one thing, but what I can’t understand is why people in a hot-ass desert town like Tucson, Arizona wouldn’t want a day off work. It’s not like you have to do something black on that day. You don’t have to read Ebony magazine, you don’t have to watch Soul Train, all you have to do is not work. Now if this was an Elvis holiday, they’d take that off. It would be like another Christmas. With big fat white guys coming down chimneys with Elvis jumpsuits on, giving out preyludes. Now, everybody doesn’t get Martin Luther King’s birthday off, even the states that celebrate, some people still have to work. Now one group that never have to work are prisoners. Criminals. Every criminal in every jail get’s the day off work, which means even James Earl Rey, the man who killed Martin Luther King gets the day off. He’s so crazy, he’s probably walking around prison saying, “Everybody gets the day off today and nobody even bothered to thank me. ” Now what Arizona needs to do is give Dr. King somebody else’s holiday. There are so many holidays we celebrate every year that mean nothing.

Like Columbus Day. Nobody celebrates Columbus Day, nobody puts three ships in their front yard. First of all, Columbus discovered the West Indies. Second of all, the land he discovered had occupants on it. That’s like discovering someone’s back yard. All Columbus did was discover a West Indian back yard. He got his little flag and said “I claim this land for Spain.” And the West Indians are like, “Hey, Mon, get your darn flag off me lawn now. Move it now!”

So Arizona, get your act together and hail the King! Thank you very much.

And there was his infamous joke that if a friend called you and told you he was lost on Martin Luther King Blvd, you should tell him to run. Personally, I think Chris Rock honors Dr. King with his jokes. I said, I think.

Anti-fan?

Happy Monday, folks.

I am not a fan of American football (the sport the rest of the world know as football Americans call soccer). Also, I don’t like the New York Giants (besides, they’re not even located in New York State, much less New York City). I nevertheless rooted for them to win in Green Bay yesterday.

Why?

I hate the New England Patriots more. I hate Belichek. I hate Brady. And, a couple of weeks ago, the Giants played really well against the Patriots, scored a lot of points and lost narrowly. I’m hoping the Giants’ defense that play against Green Bay shows up for the super bowl and that the Giants score a lot of points in the Super Bowl. I won’t watch the game. It’s usually a colossal bore. But I’ll check the papers in the morning.

I won’t rejoice if the Giants win. It’ll be satisfying that the Patriots have lost.

Bill Clinton in his Labyrinth

Bill Clinton is one of my favorite politicians. I appreciate the joy he brings to being in the public sphere. His presidency was a triumph. He accomplished a lot, especially for the economy, the environment and the general feeling he left that he had brought our nation back from the brink where the Reagan and the first Bush maladministrations left us.

Bill Clinton showed his fortitude and courage at the lowest moments in his political career. Anyone would have understood (well, maybe not) and forgiven him if he’d decided he did not feel up to delivering the 1998 State of the Union Address. Ken Starr and his posse were braying at the door. There were traps, perjury and whatever else, everywhere. And, in a closet somewhere, hid a certain stained blue dress.

Bill Clinton walked into the well of Congress in January 1998 defiant and strode out triumphant having delivered one of the best speech of his life.

That performance quelled, for a moment, the storms that would engulf him for much of 1998, one demeaning revelation after the other. But his travails served to focus him on his job as president. He expertly steered the ship of state and when he turned up in January 1999 to deliver the State of the Union Address, he reported to the country that he was just fine, thank you. And the nation, not half bad. The best economic climate in a generation and much, much, more.

Bill Clinton left office one of the highest rated presidents and he has continued to do good works even as he joined the ranks of one of the wealthiest men on the planet.

But Clinton is also a tragic figure. He possesses such prodigious talent, such intellect, yet barely scratched the surface of what he could have accomplished as president. He still has ambitions, things he wants to accomplish for the nation and for himself. I suspect that is why he’s fighting so hard to get his wife elected president. You cannot fault a man for that.

The problem is that the strain on him is showing.

Where is the old happy warrior? Why has Barack Obama’s candidacy so spooked him? Obama is Clinton’s truest heir. His pitch to the Reno, Nev., Journal Gazette, despite the backhanded slap at Bill, is classic Clintonism.

Whatever happens in this election, I want the old Bill back.


People I like

Tom Robbins of the village voice, one of my favorite writers, covered Obama talking and raising money in Jersey City last week:

Every pundit and pollster was still insisting that something
must have gone badly wrong for Barack Obama the night
before in the snows of New Hampshire as the line down
John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City kept growing last
Wednesday. The line went down the street and around the
corner at St. Peter’s College, and it was clear by 3 p.m. that
at least a third of those waiting patiently for the rally with
the Democratic senator from Illinois weren’t even going to
make it into the gym at the school’s Yanitelli Center, which
had a capacity 2,000 people.

Read the rest of his piece here

City Urged to Scrap Homeless Shelter Plan By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

March 21, 2002

Opponents of a proposed 400-bed homeless shelter in Williamsburg rallied against the plan last night, calling on Mayor Bloomberg to cancel it.

“What they’re creating is a warehouse for homeless men,” said Jose Leon.

Opening the East Williamsburg Industrial Park facility, at an old factory at 89 Porter Ave., is the first half of a plan to close the 800-bed 30th Street men’s shelter at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. The city will build a second 400-bed facility in the Bronx.

The Giuliani administration signed a $180 million, 22-year contract with the Manhattan-based Doe Fund to operate the shelter, immediately drawing the ire of Brooklyn elected officials and community activists, who sued the city.

Marty Needelman, a lawyer with Brooklyn Legal Services, said the city used subterfuge to avoid input from the community. But the city maintained the plan did not require review because, in part, the Doe Fund is a nongovernmental firm buying a building from a private seller.

“It’s a bad precedent,” Needelman said. “If the city can get away with avoiding the land-review process through this technicality on a $180-million project, then they can do that on a lot of other projects and undermine one of the critical features of the City Charter.”

Lower courts have ruled against the project opponents, but they have filed notice that they intend to appeal.

Even the Coalition for the Homeless — which fights to get the city to live up to its obligations to provide shelter, housing and services for the homeless — is opposed to the project.

“It’s an incredibly shortsighted and poor policy,” Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless, said of the plan. “Our position has been that that money would be much better spent to open permanent housing for the rising number of homeless men.”

But George McDonald, founder of The Doe Fund, which finds work and provides treatment for homeless men, said the coalition should be working with The Doe Fund, not fighting it, on this project.

“This is a replacement facility, not a new shelter,” McDonald said. “In a system like we have in New York City, you have to have tranistional facilities. You can’t take somebody right off the street and put them in permanent housing.”

But Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Williamsburg) asked why it has to be Williamsburg, which has a waste-transfer station that processes 40% of the city’s trash daily and a 200-bed homeless shelter in nearby Greenpoint.

He said he had heard a bio-tech medical research facility is being installed in place of the Manhattan homeless shelter that would be closed down.

“Instead of giving us the homeless shelter, give us the bio-tech research facility,” Lopez said. “It would be a very positive thing for our community because it would create hundreds of jobs.”

Linda Gibbs, commissioner of the city Homeless Services Department, said the project is a necessary service.

“It is not a matter of making a choice between providing permanent housing, or a homeless shelter,” she said. The city has an obligation to provide shelter for anyone who needs it.”